Big tech gives free speech the boot

Sky News commentator Peta Credlin in their Melbourne offices. Picture: Aaron Francis

Do you ever wonder, as I do, how on earth we have come to this: with free speech under constant attack; mums being denied their biological breastfeeding reality; the American Medical Association recommending the removal of the sex designation from birth certificates; and a rugby star attacked for quoting the Bible on social media, even though it’s the same book that most of our politicians hold in their hand to swear their oath of office?

The latest salvo in this war on what we are allowed to read, see, hear and discuss is the decision by US video giant YouTube to ban Sky News Australia from its distribution platform for seven days after it unilaterally claimed Sky News had breached its Covid-19 misinformation standards.

If you have watched Sky News you would know it puts myriad views to air each day. It isn’t the ABC with its groupthink; hosts can and often do disagree. I was fully vaccinated within days of being allowed, for instance, because I believe it’s the only way out of the economic hell of these lockdowns, and I’ve gone as hard against anti-lockdown protesters last month as I did against the Black Lives Matter protesters last year. To me, the fact there are different opinions on Sky News is one of its great strengths. We air contrary views; we believe in the battle of ideas and not the dumbing down of debate.

It worries me that over my adult life we have moved from being a nation that loved to debate over the back fence, in the front bar or on talkback radio, that was tolerant of other views and preferred to contest them rather than shut them down, to where we are today: in the moronic grip of the cancel culture. Not only that but we’ve lost the ability to disagree civilly; and especially if you speak up against the left, you’re not just wrong but somehow bad.

I was the broadcasting policy adviser and later chief of staff to two communications ministers in the Howard government, so I appreciate the need to regulate a sector as important as the media.

Sky News is both a subscription service and free-to-air on regional TV, so it is rightly subject to several codes plus broader Australian law such as defamation. All of these, though, are set in Australia, by Australians, based on our values and norms, and allow for natural justice.

Not so this decision to cancel Sky News for a week. It’s arbitrary, subjective, opaque and foreign. In this case, it’s a tech behemoth based in the San Francisco Bay Area deciding what passes for allowable debate in this country. If YouTube were Chinese or Russian-owned, I suspect the outcry might be greater; but free speech is a vital principle to be upheld at all times, not just when the speaker is someone we support and the censor is someone we oppose.

I’m reminded of Martin Niemoller’s lament, albeit in a different context: “First they came for the socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.”

It’s important to draw a distinction between publishers, which take responsibility for what appears under their masthead, or on their station or channel, and the social media giants, which don’t. YouTube, Facebook and Twitter all maintain that they are platforms, not publishers, and have always insisted that what users post is their own individual responsibility, not that of big tech. That’s why you can’t sue YouTube for defamation as opposed to the person making the statement YouTube carries. This was their argument for years against paying a royalty to the media organisations whose intellectual property they carried.

How did we arrive at a point where a tech behemoth based in the San Francisco Bay Area decides what passes for allowable debate in this country.

But if they are, indeed, merely a platform rather than a publisher, refusing to carry people because they don’t like their views is akin to a shop refusing to serve someone or public transport refusing to carry someone on the basis of some personal characteristic thought to be odious.

And there’s nothing, as yet, that can be done about it because this isn’t the “old” media regulated by communications law but a private information highway where people can be shut down on a whim, especially if they offend against the canons of political correctness.

How did we get to this position where Silicon Valley is more powerful than our politicians and regulators in Canberra; and where foreign corporations determine what Australians can see and hear? Explore the online world and even where there are policies to weed this content out there’s violent videos, grossly degrading pornography, celebrations of illicit drug use and abhorrent sexual abuse. But for the better part of this week, the left-wing political puritans in Silicon Valley have decreed there can be no Sky News because debating the ethics and efficacy of lockdowns and mask wearing in Australia is akin to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre.

It took the current government several years to work up the courage to take on big tech but it struck a global blow for fairness when it used the credible threat of legislation to force the social media platforms to negotiate a fee for the intellectual property they make use of to expand their reach.

Protecting commercial rights is one of the key duties of government. But protecting the right to freedom of speech is even more important. And these days, being banned from social media is not the equivalent of failing to have a letter to the editor published. While it lasts, it’s more like being forced into a vow of silence.

When billions of people are having their say on social media, however banal or bizarre, muzzling any individual or outlet is a serious infringement on liberty. I’m not saying it should never be done but it certainly shouldn’t be just the commercial or political judgment of a functionary in California against which there’s no recourse. To maintain social licence to operate here, there has to be some due process before political commentary is taken down; natural justice and the right to appeal, at the very least, to our regulators rather than a blanket ban by a US private company.

One thing’s for sure: social media is too influential to remain a wild west where the law is made by the multibillionaires who own it.

Peta Credlin is the host of Credlin on Sky News, 6pm weeknights.